


evidence

by erintoknow



Series: Aria [25]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Homophobia, Investigation, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 00:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19842091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erintoknow/pseuds/erintoknow
Summary: Following Heartbreak, the facts aren't adding up for Sergeant Steel about what happened to Sidestep. Follow every lead you can.





	evidence

Not quite civilian business, not quite Ranger business. Chen wasn’t really sure how to dress, wasn’t comfortable with this blending of lives. But if he didn’t get to the bottom of this, who would? Ortega was in no state of mind to pursue this. The odds of a dead end was too high. He couldn’t do that to his friend. Things were bad enough right now. Breath in, breath out. Straighten his collar. Ring the doorbell, knock on the door. Wait.

It had taken Chen more than a few beers and hours of reminiscing with Ortega. Surreptitiously going over what they remembered of old stories, writing down the details and cross-referencing everything against each other with a map of the city. Cross out options and narrow down the list. Maybe the fourth time would be the charm. Hopefully it would be worth it.

Someone shouted from the other side of the door, the sound of shuffling furniture. There was the sound of several locks being undone and then finally, the door cracked up, a single suspicious eye peering out. “Who is it?”

Chen clasped his hands behind his back. “Sergeant Steel, we talked on the phone briefly yesterday?”

The eye stares, boring in to him.

Chen stares back.

The eye blinks first. “Yes, yes, I remember now.” The door shuts, there’s a rattling of a chain, then opens again wider. “Com’on then, take a seat.” Defying expectations the owner of the eye is not a crone of an old woman but a man, maybe in his forties? Greying hair, wrinkles coming into their own on his face. If he dressed a little nicer, Chen might even class him as handsome. Untrimmed beard and beer-stained tank-top, however? Not so much.

“Thank you,” Chen says as he steps inside, closing the door behind him.

“Please, take a seat,” his host repeats, gesturing towards the wooden chairs arranged around a dining room table. His host pulls a chair away from the table edge before sliding into his own, a pile of books in poor condition scattered in front of him.

Chen raises a hand. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Alright then, suit yourself.” He shrugs, “I’m John Carpenter, nice to meet you in person, Mr…?” Chen eyes the man. Definitely a fake name.

“Sergeant Steel is fine.”

John frowns at that.

“You said the person I’m looking for might have been a tenant of yours?”

He nods, reaches to grab one of the books in front of him. This one looks like it’s seen some heavy water damage. “Yep, the name Becker sounded familiar, and you certainly don’t see too many German names in this part of town these days, mostly–” He stops himself, and looks at Chen uncomfortably. Chen allows him the courtesy of pretending not to notice.

“Anyway,” John flips through the book, stopping on one page to circle a name with a red pen. “Here we go.” The way John just rips the page out of the book and slides it over is enough to make Chen wince. “Moved in back in 2007, stayed about… oh, two years?”

Chen scans the page. Towards the bottom, the circled name ‘Chelsea D. Becker | April 13th, 2007 | Deposit and Rent: Paid’

Chelsea? A fake name? Even for Sidestep that seemed a little lazy. With some care, the fine motor control in his hand wasn’t the best, Chen pulls a photograph out of his unbuttoned front pocket, putting it down on the table. “Does this person look familiar?”

John leans over, squinting down at the small, crinkled picture. The only group picture Ortega had been able to corral Sidestep into taking without her suit on, dressed in a vest over a long-sleeved blouse and skirt with tights. It was supposed to stay on the fridge. Hopefully he’d find something out of this that would get Ortega to forgive him.

John purses his lips, pushes his tongue in his mouth from side to side and makes a clicking noise. “The one on the far right there,” Chen keeps a blank expression as John points a finger right on Sidestep’s face. “Reminds me of the kid Chelsea always had around, maybe a sister?”

That throws Chen for a loop. “Parent-Child?”

John shakes his head. “Don’t think so. This kid just showed up a not long after Chelsea did. Maybe right out of high school?” John clicks his tongue and shrugs. “Normally I’d charge extra for stuffing two people in studio apartment like that, but I think the kid had been homeless so I pretended I didn’t see nothing.”

Alright then. What was the connection between this ‘Chelsea Becker’ and Ariadne Becker?

“Can you tell me anything else about them?”

“‘friad not, I respect my tenants’ privacy.” John says with possibly the most lying-through-my-teeth look Chen has ever seen on a man’s face.

Chen waits him out.

Finally; “Okay, well. I think the woman might have been a drug dealer or something. Always weird hours. Always paid on full, never late–”

“That’s cause for suspicion?”

“Around here it is, yeah.” John waves a hand, dismissing the question. “Now that I think about it, you know how women are,” He shoots Chen a knowing look. “Maybe she was just keeping the boy around as a fu-“

“Excuse me,” Chen cuts him off, “Boy?”

“Yeah, boy. Kid was a boy.”

Chen frowns. Another dead end then after all.

John clicks his tongue. “Probably a fairy though,” He makes a face, completely oblivious to the fact that only years of self-discipline is saving him from having his nose broken. “Kept running around in girl clothes and shit. Hell, maybe that’s not a sister in your picture. Could just be him.”

Maybe not a dead end then? But that would mean… It would mean Chen has even more questions now than when he started this whole process.

“…when was the last time you saw the kid?” Chen asks, keeping his face blank.

“So, when Chelsea moved out, I offered to keep renting to him, but he couldn’t afford it. Felt bad though, so generous man that I am, I let him stay, off-the-books, until I got a new tenant to rent the room like, a month later? Never saw him again after that.”

“No idea where they might have went?”

John shakes his head. “Him? Nah, he just straight up vanished the day I gave him the heads up, didn’t even take anything with him.”

Chen sighs, frustration mounting. Why was trying to dig into anything about Sidestep like digging in sand? “What about the… the woman, Chelsea, any idea where she went?”

John shrugs, “Left the city, I think?” An idea occurs to him and and he leans in for a conspiratorial whisper. “You think she was on the run from the law? You Rangers tracking down a cold-case?”

“Something like that.” Chen pinches his nose. “I can’t discuss the details of an investigation in progress.” That was… technically true.

John clicks his tongue, grins. “Say no more Sarge,” he winks. “Say, you know what? Maybe you want to take a look at the stuff he left behind, maybe something’ll help out the case?”

Chen raises an eyebrow. “I find it hard to believe you held on to a tenant’s property for half a decade.”

John waves him off and gets up the table, trundling into a back room. “I am a _collector_ Sarge.” He says the word with an uncomfortable level of relish.

A few minutes of rummaging later and John is back with a small plastic bin. He drops it on the table in front of Chen. “Few pictures, a journal. Think there were some tapes and records too, but I kept those for me.” He looks at Chen, “Always figured I could sell it back to the kid if he came around again. Never did though.”

Chen has to will his hand to keep steady as he picks through the few items in the bin. Pull out one photo, a young blonde-haired woman standing next to an even younger looking androgynous teenager with short reddish-brown hair, and green eyes. Chen lays the the picture down next to the earlier photo he had brought with him. It feels like he’s looking at something he shouldn’t be – there’s an itching in the back of his skull. But the similarities are too close to be ignored, right down to the way the uncomfortable smile breaks across the face.

“I’ll need to hold on to these for evidence.”

John opens his arms wide, “Be my guest, always happy to be of service to the law.” John winks again, “Provided of course, the law remembers me favorably in return.”

Chen frowns, “I’ll make a note of it.” He says, with no such intention to do so. He reaches back into the bin, pulls out the journal. No indication on the cover who owned it. Just a plain black moleskin bound book, held shut with a cloth strap. Slip it open with a careful slide of the thumb, start with the first page.

> _chelsea thinks keeping a journal will help that I can write out the nightmares as if that’ll like get them outside of me?_
> 
> _she doesn’t understand why I can’t do that I can’t explain it to her either I mean_
> 
> _last night wasn’t even that bad, since i started saving people things feel better_
> 
> _like_
> 
> _i’m in control again it’s fun actually? just hang around with a police scanner and be ready to run across town tucking sucks like super shit though_
> 
> _i don’t trust the rangers charge seems real full of herself thinks she’s so hot with her perfect smile and the way she stands with her hips cocked and_
> 
> _wow that’s embarrassing_
> 
> _you know what forget this this is dumb sorry chelsea_

Chen flips through the rest of the book, all the other pages are blank. Another dead end. Nothing to suggest what might have happened to Sidestep _now_. Nothing to hint at what was up with the ambulance Chen _knows_ carted Sidestep away in direct contradiction to the official report. Where had Ariadne lived between this and now? Where did she go when she wasn’t at a crime scene or following Ortega like a lost cat? Who did she associate with outside of the Rangers?

Maybe they could put the journal in the ceremonial casket, it’d be better than nothing. But how to explain finding it to Ortega without giving away the investigation? And there was the matter of… Maybe it was best to keep the journal to himself after all. This was one secret that didn’t need to be exposed.

Chen puts the journal back in the bin and adds both the pictures and the torn record book page. Might as well hold on to it. Hopefully his government contact would get back to him soon with something, anything, about the where he’d seen that ambulance go. This had been his best shot at nailing down a residence and it ends up being years old. The only other lead left was this ‘Chelsea’ woman, and given his luck so far, it was hard to be optimistic about the odds.

Ariadne Becker, woman of mystery and thorn in his side, couldn’t even have the courtesy to have a non-mysterious death. This one was going to eat at him.


End file.
